It’s been a while since I’ve last posted, but it sure has been busy. That’s a good thing, and from what I hear, many a good SEO company is getting more business. I’m happy that the industry is flourishing, but what I’m not happy about is all the misinformation that’s getting communicated to potential clients. I posted about SEO myths a while back, but something I didn’t touch on was SEO for small businesses.

SEO for Small Busineses

Here’s the deal: Google is almost definitely looking at a brand’s presence — online and offline — in their search rankings factor. Nearly 100% of the time, it’s much easier to rank for an already-established brand than it is for a new one. Essentially, small businesses have it even tougher in the online world. Here are some reasons why:

1. Google Sandbox: Nobody knows if it really exists, but we’ve surely experienced some of its effects for small, new sites. According to Wikipedia, “Google temporarily reduces the page rank of new domains, placing them into what is referred to as its “sandbox”, in an effort to counter the ways that search engine optimizers attempt to manipulate Google’s page ranking by creating lots of inbound links to a new web site from other web sites that they own.” To sum it up, you’ve got to earn your keep these days and start at the bottom of the ladder.

2. Inbound Links: Partly due to the sandbox effects, inbound links are tough to build for a new business. As an SEO, you can’t build up 1,000 links in a few months for a new business — especially a small one. We’ve found that Google takes a good look at your link profile if you’re new and if it’s fishy, you’re going to get penalized.

3. PageRank versus Public Relations: In my view, it’s pretty much the same thing these days. Bigger brands that continually push offline marketing efforts inevitably rank faster because there is more natural linkbuilding occurring. In the long run, that is less effort and better quality. If a brand reaches out to a major media outlet like the Chicago Tribune and gets a story published, it’s likely that the content will also be pushed to the website — with a link. Even if it’s a no-follow, the brand gets rewarded with a boost in site traffic. For a small business, that’s a huge win.

4. Quality Content: In very few cases do I see new businesses allocate enough resources to creating quality content. Content is the thing that will get you out of the sandbox, and it’s also the thing that will position you as the industry expert. If you’re a new site and a new business, the worst thing you can do is to throw up crap SEO content, have Google review it and deem you unworthy because they think you’re a spammer. It happens — just don’t let it happen to you.

When it comes down to it, the message is simply that it’s not easy for small businesses. Some small business owners think that SEO is the pot of gold (it can be over time), but many don’t understand what they’re up against. My suggestion? Invest in SEO, but make sure you’re doing your part in getting your brand out there.

We’re probably not the only SEO company who has had to dispel SEO myths. In the past, it was easier to bat away doubts potential clients had – SEO is not about stuffing keywords into title tags, SEO is not about submitting to crap directories, SEO is not fast, etc.

These days, however, people are looking at SEO from a return on investment (ROI) perspective. Most clients are already up to speed about the basics of SEO, and what we’ve found is that the relevant myths are most tied into expectations of ROI. Here are two myths that you’ll want to dispel right away to save you a lot of explaining later on.

SEO Myth #1: Higher Rankings Guarantee More Sales

Look at it from the client’s perspective. “Here are three keywords that describe my company. This SEO company is telling me how important search engine optimization is for business. That means if I’m on Page 1, my sales are guaranteed to increase.”

This kind of logic is perfectly understandable. What’s missing from it are other major factors  necessary for increased sales.

• Conversion Rate: Yes, Page 1 rankings will increase traffic, but if the client has a website that doesn’t convert traffic, sales won’t increase at all.
• Customer Service: It’s not ideal to drive a lot of new traffic if a company isn’t ready to handle the extra volume. Poor customer service is the fastest way to lose customers and one of the major factors to driving and sustaining sales increases.
• Brand Awareness: SEO does increase brand awareness, but it doesn’t do much as much to build brand equity and interaction (Google doesn’t let you post your logo in the SERPs…not yet, anyway).

In case some readers are taking this the wrong way, here are a few reminders about the benefits of SEO:

• SEO does drive qualified, relevant traffic.
• SEO does increase visibility on the Web and provide an opportunity to obtain new customers.
• SEO does provide an opportunity to market your company as an authority in your industry.

SEO Myths

SEO Myth #2: SEO Replaces Marketing

This is a tough one, especially with the popularity of SEO. This myth suggests SEO has no limitations when there are actually quite a few. For example, SEO can’t create the same buzz as a traditional marketing campaign. A mistake that many companies make – especially the smaller ones – is to rely on SEO too much. Yes, SEO is a traffic driver, but it certainly isn’t the only one. E-blasts, print advertising campaigns, radio and television still perform remarkably well. We recommend companies take a holistic marketing approach, not just focus on a single promotion channel, no matter what the medium.

If the budget isn’t there, a company needs to decide what approach to take in regards to marketing. Do you want quick results and immediate traffic increases? Run a traditional advertising campaign and blast potential customers with your message. Do you want long-term results that bring in sustained, qualified traffic? Go with SEO.

There are obviously more, but we’ll leave that to another day. Any other SEO myths you want to dispel out there?

It’s pretty inevitable that any SEO company — ours included — is thinking about Google Buzz and wondering how in the world it’s going to affect SEO. Anything that Google releases is bound to send tremors of its presence through the Web. It’s no stretch to think that Buzz will affect the social media space — but what about SEO?

If you’re still not familiar with Google Buzz, check out their video to get the basics.

Just the Good Stuff
Buzz’s recommendation feature is likely going to have the biggest impact on SEO. According to Google, “Buzz recommends interesting posts and weeds out ones you’re likely to skip.” It is essentially Page Rank within Buzz, and it will be interesting to see if Google funnels everything through social search. My bet is that they are likely to do this. Google’s overarching mission is to organize the Web’s content based on relevancy. There’s no reason why they wouldn’t push highly rated content within Buzz into social search.

What Does This Mean?
This means that Google Buzz is another gateway for something to go viral — with bigger implications. Buzz is already hooked into Gmail and its millions of users, plus Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, etc., and because it’s all centralized, a great relevant post is going to get a lot more airtime. If social search enters the mix, it basically means there’s another form of SEO, except it’s not based on backlinks or optimization techniques. Rather, it’s strictly focused on how many people like and share the content (a.k.a. Digg).

This means that strong, quality content is going to be the best way to drive rankings. Really, this is the way it should be. The better and more relevant the content is, the more it gets shared, the higher it rises in Buzz’s “Page Rank.” Buzz gets implemented into social search, and your piece of content gets ranked right up there on Page 1.

What do you think? Any other predictions out there?

If you’ve ever been handed a list of 100 keywords and been told, “I want these on Page 1,” you already know the importance of SEO strategy. How on earth are you going to do it? Aside from hiring an SEO company, you’re going to need an organized strategy — and lots of it.

1. Organize your keywords into themes: This is exactly what Google recommends with PPC campaigns, but the same principles of organization hold true. It’s much easier to handle three or four SEO campaigns versus 100 scattered keywords.

2. Sort by search volume: Let’s say you have four themes or campaigns, divided up neatly into 25 keywords each. Now you’ll want to sort them by search volume. From experience, it’s typically safe to assume that the higher the search volume, the more difficult a keyword is to get to Page 1.

3. Identify your core keywords: For each campaign, you’ll want to pick your core keywords. These are the big kahunas, the ones that will drive the most traffic to the site. We normally pick about two to three primary keywords to focus our efforts for content creation and linkbuilding. You want them to have enough search volume to warrant targeting them throughout the length of your campaign.

4. Identify your longtail keywords: You can do this by establishing a cutoff point for each campaign We typically use 1,000 searches per month and below as our criteria for longtail keywords, but this number will vary depending on your definitions and the search volume for your keywords.

5. Create content strategy: You’ll have to figure out how you’re going to target all four campaigns. Content is always a major player in this, but creating content targeting all these keywords will be tough. You’ll want to create an SEO editorial calendar and create categories that correspond to the four campaigns. For example, if your campaigns are targeting themes such as “birds,” “cats,” dogs,” and “horses,” you’ll want to create categories that match those. All the content that you create would fall in these categories and help target corresponding keywords.

6. Create linkbuilding strategy: Some linkbuilders are haphazard in pursuing links. It’s better to take a more organized approach in order to effectively handle potentially thousands of links for your site. You’ll want to take the industry research you’ve done, along with the keyword research, to figure out how to attack linkbuilding, whether it’s analyzing competitor links, conducting blogger outreach or submitting to directories. Read up on how to use editorial content as linkbait.

7. Monitor, monitor, monitor: This is probably one of the hardest things to do, especially if you have multiple campaigns. But now that you are organized and have an organized SEO strategy in place, it’ll be easier to keep track of progress. You can establish milestones and conduct assessments quarterly or biannually to restrategize if necessary.

Those are the basic steps to creating a good SEO strategy. Any other suggestions? I’ll be working on more detailed guides to each of these steps in the coming months. Feel free to add tips and review!

In the SEO world, knowing how to build links is one of the major aspects of a successful SEO company. Even with all the talk about quality over quantity, I still see our clients’ competition pursuing spammy links and directories nobody would ever think of using. Is it helpful for the searcher? Absolutely not, and I have a hunch that eventually — although nobody knows when — Google is really going to crack down on it, or change their algorithms so low-quality link directories no longer factor into the mix. The solution? Focus on the what’s best for all parties — use editorial content as linkbait.

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